Despite being the world champions and riding the momentum of his win in the semi-finals over Scarlett, sOs suffered a 1-4 defeat to the winner of the Red Bull Battlegrounds, PartinG.
Game 1
The first map Whirlwind started off with both of the Korean Protoss players exchanging English phrases. The conversation eventually escalated into smiley faces and suddenly the game was on.
An oracle opening set up an early lead for Parting as it sneaked under the nose of sOs’ 2-gate stalker opening. Eight-probe-lead was established for the 2012 WCS champion and Parting transitioned right into void rays knowing there’s an opening to do even more damage.
It turned out Parting wouldn’t even need his void ray. Once the few stranded stalkers that sOs had ran into Parting’s own stalker concave, allowing the SKT Protoss to climb up the ramp and set camp in his enemy’s base, the game was over.
Game 2
sOs opened Yeonsu by rushing to sentry and used it alongside his MSC to keep Parting’s stalkers away and hide his dark shrine transition. Though such a low sentry count and a lack of expansion is usually indicative of said DT tech, Parting misread the situation and sent his oracle across the map, creating a window for sOs to do damage to the mineral line.
While it was certainly a major inconvenience for the SKT Protoss, the dark Templar attack left Parting only a handful of probes behind. His demise lay elsewhere, namely in the follow-up blink stalker attack that caught him underprepared and undersupplied, thus tying the score.
Game 3
PartinG kicked off the third game with a brutal cannon rush behind sOs' main mineral line. sOs tried to immediately put an end to it, but PartinG was able to re-wall on time and extend rush's duration. Despite the cheese being properly executed, however, sOs fended it off and survived with the better part of his economy intact.
With Parting behind in economy and tech, sOs threw down a second nexus in attempt to sprint further ahead of his opponent. On the other side of the map, Parting himself took a more defensive posture, going for a 1-base 3-gate into a late stargate.
Despite playing excellent in the earliest stages of the game, sOs’ defense cracked around the 9th minute mark. Completely unspotted, PartinG’s stalkers bypassed sOs’ own army and marched unhindered right into the Woongjin main base, destroyed the single pylon powering sOs’s production and started dealing pain. sOs – who himself had managed to sneak into Parting’s main and initiate a sort of a base trade – eventually realized the race is not going in his favor and gg-ed after losing all of his probes.
Game 4
A standard game four on Frost came to contrast the oddity of game three. Taking advantage of sOs’ lack of sentries – and thus lack of hallucination scouting – PartinG transformed his oracle opening into a heavy all in. Six gateways were thrown in to support the void rays that were stockpiling and before sOs could figure out danger he was beyond saving. The firepower of PartinG’s army melted sOs’ natural in seconds and a tap out followed promptly.
Game 5
The old school battleground of Cloud Kingdom welcomed the Protoss enemies for the fifth and final game. One loss away from grand final loss, sOs went back to what won him his only map so far – a DT opening into blink stalker follow-up.
While both techs and harassments were executed with meticulousness, Parting was on top of everything this time around. A perfect sim city defense locked the DT away and a combination of immortal defense and great nexus cannon timings held the stalkers back.
sOs poked for about ten minutes before he gave up on his attempt to break Parting this way and took the more straightforward approach of facing him directly in the middle of the map. While the two archon/stalker/immortal armies seemed even on first sight, Parting’s overwhelming archon numbers rammed through and closed on to sOs’ immortals. Once those fell, the series was PartinG’s.
RESULTS
1st - 
PartinG - $20,000
2nd - sOs - $10,000
3rd - 
Scarlett - $6,000
4th - MC - $4,000
5th - 
Bomber - $3,000
5th - HyuN - $3,000
7th - Golden - $2,000
7th - 
Snute - $2,000
?
Rotator photo: Marv Watson / Red Bull Content Pool